A quick post this morning, as I am rushing off the to Bureau of Motor Vehicles with the (vain?) hope of not waiting in line till Wednesday--

It's 2 degrees in Portland, and still I spent all day yesterday feeling homesick, even though I knew it was much colder in Harmony, and I would have been trudging around in it hauling wood.

It was the smell I was missing mostly: that clean silent fragrance of deep cold, the whiff of woodsmoke behind it.

Did you ever read Heidi? Do you remember when she visits Clara's family in Frankfort, and they're all so wonderful to her and treat her like a sister and a daughter, but all she can do is cry because she's so lonely for the mountains? That's how I felt yesterday.